Bangert: One-two punch to Lafayette memories: Colt World Series and a Pizza King

Memories made over the decades bring some bittersweet moments over this week's loss of a summer baseball tournament and a hangout on Teal Road

Lafayette's Loeb Stadium has been home to the Colt World Series for 48 of the past 49 years. This week Pony Baseball announced it would move the tournament for teams of 15- and 16-year-olds to Marion, Illinois, in 2018.(Photo: J&C file photo)

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – What are you going to do next summer, Connie Basham, when the calendar turns to August and there’s no Colt World Series to cater to for the first in a Lafayette generation or two?

Basham, still a bit stunned a few days after Pony Baseball pulled the rug out from under Lafayette and yanked a summer tradition about to mark 50 years at Loeb Stadium, said she was already a bit too disappointed to think about it right away.

“Every year since 1989 at our house, we’ve pumped ourselves up and been ready for those boys,” said Basham, who for years helped coordinate housing for players in a baseball tournament played in Lafayette’s Columbian Park for 48 of the past 49 years.

“We’ve never done anything else at that time,” said Basham, who over the past 28 years has hosted 121 players, mainly from the Puerto Rico teams that have come to play in the international tournament. “This is going to leave a big hole. It’s not going to be the same around here, that’s for sure.”

Both were victims of disappearing crowds and changing tastes, to a certain degree.

But if memory serves – and it seems to for so many – they were essential pieces of what it meant to grow up in Lafayette.

News about the Colt World Series, a weeklong tournament featuring teams of 15- and 16-year-olds in the Pony Baseball system across the U.S. and the world, was a surprise, to hear local organizers tell it.

Pony Baseball’s Steve Miller told J&C’s Mike Carmin that the Colt World Series was interested in the state-of-the-art stadium available 270 miles away in Marion, Illinois. (Lafayette’s $16 million plans to replace Loeb Stadium by the fall of 2020 wasn’t sufficient, apparently.) Tim Clark, president of the local Colt World Series committee, said there had been hints that Pony Baseball wasn’t happy with shrinking numbers of participation in Colt League baseball.

Still …

“Why would they strip it just as we’re coming up to the 50th anniversary, after this community has been so faithful?” Basham asked.

The news was enough to prompt a Tuesday visit to Original Frozen Custard, just over Loeb Stadium’s fence in left-center, at Main Street and Wallace Avenue, for Judy Barnes of Lafayette.

“That, and it’s the last day of the season for the Custard,” Barnes said, a day before the stand closed until March 1. “But the Colt World Series – so many things go through your mind. Not so much about the baseball. But just that it was the place to be when we were growing up. … It was like your warning that summer was almost over.”

Fruit drink in hand – another Lafayette institution – Barnes shook her head: “I haven’t gone in the past few years. But I’m having a hard time imagining Lafayette without (the Colt World Series).”

If the Colt World Series was a bit of a shock, the writing had been on the wall for a month or so leading up to the final day for a Pizza King with a distinctive model train that delivered drinks.

More specifically, it was on a note on the glass storefront facing Teal Road, warning that Oct. 31 would be the last day at the Jefferson Square location across from the Tippecanoe County 4-H Fairgrounds. (Those paying their final respects and picking up one last pizza were informed by management – who have been fairly silent about the closure – that there were two other Pizza King locations in Lafayette.)

As word of that sign traveled across social media, the talk was as much about the joys of half-days – when there was such a thing – at Lafayette’s Tecumseh Junior High School and post-game hanging out after Lafayette Jeff and Central Catholic games.

“I have been going to Pizza King on Teal my whole life,” said Heather Royer, a 1999 Lafayette Jeff grad who now lives in Benton County. She went one last time Monday night so she could get pictures. “(I) just have so many memories with family and friends there.”

Josh DeZarn, a 2003 Harrison High School graduate, grew up about an hour away in Winamac.

“When I was a kid, my parents would drop us three boys off to our grandparents’ house here in Lafayette for the weekend every once in a while,” DeZarn said. “We always wanted to go see the train at the pizza place. Grandma always took us. … Getting our drinks and napkins from a model train, we thought, was just an added bonus.”

Drew Keller, a Realtor now living in Indianapolis, grew up near Armstrong Park, so the Pizza King was an easy walk from home or from school with his brothers.

“To us, that Pizza King was like going to Chuck E. Cheese's. They had video games and the train – we would try to derail it by putting pebbles on the rail, but it never worked,” Keller said. “When I got to middle school, ‘PK’ was the spot. If there was a half-day, there was no doubt where everyone was going to lunch after school. After a Tecumseh football game, you knew where everyone was going. Same with basketball and all sporting events. Walking home from school, you’d stop by Pizza King. That continued on even through high school. … Sad to see it go.”

The booths had high backs, making for private spaces. The walls had iconic pictures of Lafayette. And there were TVs that took quarters.

“We always bring tons of quarters to watch TV,” said Amanda Hedges of Lafayette. “We did go there and watch the Super Bowl.”

Must have taken quite a few quarters.

“Yes, it did,” Hedges laughed. “I think we had like $10, but only had a few quarters left (at the end of the game).”

Carol Banta, who lived in Lafayette from 1982 to 1996, still stopped by the Pizza King to sit in her kids’ favorite booth – “the one that showed the original round pool at Columbian Park” – and see the train – “soda always tastes better when it’s delivered by train” – when she traveled between her home in Indianapolis and family in Benton County.

“I would have to agree,” Banta said, “it was all about creating memories.”

Basham was all for talking about memories of the Colt World Series variety this week. Those led her to her worries for the players – “my boys, they’re all my boys” – many of whom were in the thick of recovery from Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

“I’ve been focused on my boys of the past more than thinking about the boys of the future, with these hurricanes,” Basham said. “We got to be so close, thanks to the Colt World Series.

“What I feel sorry for are all these host families who put so much into that week to make memories. Now, memories we’ve made are all we’re going to have. There won’t be new ones, I guess,” Basham said. “I feel sort of sorry for what Lafayette’s lost right now.”